THE INCOMPLETE GUIDE TO LONDON.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2598, 4 September 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE INCOMPLETE GUIDE TO LONDON.

(By Richard Whiteing, Autlior of “No. 5, John Street,” etc.) “As to the Tower o’ London, Jnwdy,” said Crumpet, “I could take yer to where it is', but I ain’t goin’ to say I’ve over bin inside, ’cos that’s a lie. I seen it from t’other side of the river —see?” Geordie was a Lancashire lad, who having come up to the capital for his annual few days holiday, thought he * might want someone to show him about. So he had foregathered with a Cockney cousin—born in the purple of the river mists—and lay way of tutorial fee had undertaken to stand treat. The arrangement was perfectly agreeable to the guide, who, as a. casual laborer, was always ready for a change. The first day of their pilgrimage showed the new employer that he had made a mistake, though he stuck loyally to his bargain. Crumpet—so called, apparently, because there was absolutely no suggestion of that delicacy in any paid of him, moral or physically—knew' nothing about London, mainly for Lhe reason”that he was born in it. The native of his class generally sticks to his own quarter, despises all others, and even makes fighting raids on them when he wants to,blow off in physical energy. Crumpet had read, nothing but the. sporting news in his paper, seen nothing but what was immediately, under liis nose. Yet, in a curious way, he looked on the capital as his peculiar possession, and looked down on all persons who came from other places. Ceordie was a product of more fortunate circumstances. He had done -well at the Board School, he was a erreat reader, and he knew his London, and even his England, fairly well by report of some of the best literature in the language. Moreover, as his township was but poorly provided with monstor music halls, he escaped many o the temptations to imbecility that beset the path of his friend. “I can tell what it’s for,” continued Crumpet, “it’s a sort of ’Oilerway jail for swells.” , ~ “Used to he; I know all about that. “Would be still, if they didn’t behave theirselves.” “Nonsense.”

“That’s me all right. But perhaps you dunno that if anybody in the ’Ouse o’ Lords, or sich like, was to commit a murder, they’d go there to be scragged.” • “Keckie,” said Geordie, and left it “I say, old ’un, you do talk a /funny sort of lingo—langwidge I would/ say.” Geordie could speak the English of his day, and usually spoke it, but m moments of excitement he was a Pt to revert to the dialect in which he had Iboah reared. Eor that matter Crumpat was not all Cockney slang. His gutter had still been tempered by his Board School; and sometimes he used the wrong and the right word both together in the same sentence. It was his share of the universal struggle towards the light. Crumpet vaguely felt that his occupation was gone, yet after much exasperatingly irrevelant chatter, on theii way to the fortress, he made a gallant attempt to recover himself by vouching for the genuineness of the armor because he had once seen something like it in a play. “It’s the other way on, chottv,” returned his relative impatiently; “these are the real things.” “Excuse me,” said Crumpet, “you got sich a cur’us way o’ speakin’ sometimes that nobody would understand yer. They don’t say ‘Chotty’ in these parts. Gives yer awye, like; sounds as if you wasn’t a Englishman.” “How will ‘chuffin yed’ do?” “Take my oath, mate. I dunno what you’re drivin’ at —there! It sounds somethin’ nasty that s all I myke out. It’s a pity, too; you can talk just as well as me when you like.” St. Paul’s, which was their next stage, the guide had never entered in all his life, yet he had no hesitation in imparting definite information about it. “It’s like this ’ere,” he said confidently, “it’s the place where they bury the Lord Mares. You’ve ’eard of the Great Bell tollin’ for ’em when they die.” Depressed by his companion’s silence, he made no attempt to explain the Monument, but he roused himself again when they reached the Bank, and said edifying things about the gold in the cellars, and the soldiers that guarded it by night, all of which Geordie knew by heart. The river trip to Greenwich which followed, with the wondrous sight of the shipping in the Pool, was all new to Crumpet—as being water, an element he generally shunned in most of its uses. “Yer see, it’s this way, Londoners don’t go there by steamboats, they goes by train. It’s livelier like. There’s ’ouses all along the blessed road; an , as for places for refreshment, if you want' to , break the journey—take yer chyce—choice I should say. He freshened up, however, on reaching the Hospital, and began to expound. “All the old sailors what’s killed and wounded in the war comes heic., “How’d thi din, , thae . fair dcaves me,” said Geordie. ' “There yer go agin! I tell ye they don’t, talk like that in these parts. ,It ain’t sense.” • • At the National Gallery next day, Crumpet, having once seen the collection in childhood, thought ho. had h,s “You’d never guess what one o’ them pichshures cost. , Ten thousand each. “Seventy odd thousand sometimes,^

o’ what it works out to, one by one. AH this lot ten thou’ —d’ye toiler me?” “I should he very sorry to,” said Geordie to himself. “Them’s angels—with the wings on,” explained the other in front of a masterpiece of "Fra Angelico. “Who’d ha thought it?” “I don’t take much stock in this show,” said Crumpet, at last. “Too dead an’ alive. I like to see the figgers all a movin’—penny in the slot style; you know. Show yer somethin’ wuth seem’ in that line down our way.” “That’s a capper an’ no mistake,” said Geordie. “ ‘Spose you’re tryin’ to say that takes the cake,” returned Crumpet. “Well, that’ll do, lad, but don’t lets’ say it on either side; they might snigger at us.” “Snigger yourself,” retorted Crumpet indignantly. “Give o’er! thou meaks mi yed warelie!” “Quick —warche!” mocked Crumpet, affecting,the military step. He went all to pieces in- Westminster Abbey. He had never seen it before, never once, though he had lived in London all his life. Geordie, who knew it quite fairly well by description, went reverently and studiously here and there guide hook in hand. His companion had no sensations hut those of a sense of ignorance and a sort of indefinable awe. He wondered only at the little things, the height of the building and whether it was cold up there,' the cost of the monuments, and how expensive funerals must have' been in past times. , The names said nothing to him.

He recovered his form, however, at the British Museum, on the strength of frequent visits to it in the Bank holidays of his childhood. “'The thing you got to notice ’ere,” he explained, ‘.‘is what they call the ’Gyptian mummies. Used to bury em like that, it seems, thousands o’ T e.\rs ago—about the time Moses was foot]in. about there in the bulrushes —you’ve ’card o’ that. Filled ’em wiv’ stuffi r like a bird, ail’ wrapped ’em up in :led rag to keep out the insecks.” “Eh, thae’s a daffy, an’ no mistake,” muttered Geordie to himself, “let’s come and have a look at the British antiquities,” he added aloud; and he was soon absorbed in'the salvage of M e flint age, and its successors of bronze and iron. “Look at it one way,” said Crumpet confidentially, “I s’pose its worth money or it wouldn’t be here. Look at it another way, it’s all old macadam an’ rusty metal not worth the cartage. What price that old crock of a pitcher over there, wiv’ the spout off?”

The other bent a fierce gaze on him—- “ About as much as some of us might fetch at auction, I daresay.”

A roundabout stroll through the West End on their way to South Kensington revived Crumpet’s spirits. He felt good at the sight of the mail coaches with their freights for the suburban racecourses and other pleasure resorts, the great hotels with their hustle for the coming and going of company, the gorgeous porters at the doors, the march of the Guards through the Mall; Buckingham Palace, and the new Processional Avenue. _• His depression returned when their ramble ended at the Kensington, museum, and he was once more among what he regarded as the vague abstractions of science and art. Rather than not say anything, however, he remarked that most of the furniture looked second-hand. Geordie made no reply. Then he added that/ some people thought the secondhand stuff better than the new. Geordie groaned. Eor his part, he went on to observe, he did not exactly care to be fed up with second-hand goods. “Too dusty like—frog in yer throat: see what I mean?” “Neaw then, owd grumble-belly, tha’rt at it again—” was all Geordie vouchsafed in reply, from behind the pages of his catalogue. “Neaw!” mocked Crumpet, “he-awl ho-he!”

“Bo quiet, or thae’ll get a bat between. th’ ’een,” roared the enraged Lancastrian.

“What price that, when yer give it awye?” retorted the other, puzzled as to the meaning, yet still scenting defiance and aggression. “Well, a click i’ th’ ear-hole—will that do?” “Righto!” said Crumpet, understanding him perfectly this time, “Come outside, and try it on.” Geordie; on his part, was too angxj for apologies, though he felt he was iu the wrong, so the challenge was accepted in silence, and they went forth to find a pitch. It was not easy in that highly civilised region, but Crumpet’s experienced eye soon discovered a mews with a turn at the end screened entirely from the. view of the street. The grinning stablemen, who saw by their furious glances what they were up to, made a ring for them, and they were soon stripped to the shirt, and hard at it, with much good will on either side. They fought three rounds with hardly a break, and honors were easy, when at length they paused for breath. ‘ Crumpet showed. signs of - a promising “mouse” under the eye, as he afterwards called it, and Geordie, "to quote the same authority on the nomenclature of sport, was uncommonly flushed about “the gills.” Then one of them laughed, and the other laughed back at him, and in a moment more they were shaking hands. It was the old English »aj, the>ay of Robin Hood, Scarlett, and Little John, a bout to test each other’s mettle, and, that done, eternal friendship settled on the spot. ... , The only difference it made was that Geordie did the rest of his sight-seeing . . • ; ■ i;